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If we’re to address the deficit and debt, we need to start slaying the sacred cows.

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the deficit won’t be eliminated until fiscal 2016-17.

Later than his party campaigned on. Later than some may expect from an ostensibly fiscally conservative party.

While lousy economic conditions and temporary stimulus spending are contributing factors, we can’t accept these as the sole excuses. In fact, many economists suggest slow growth is the new trend.

No, we need to do more than play the waiting game — we need to talk cuts.

Two contenders are in the news.

As routinely as the seasons change, when Parliament takes a break, MPs flit about their ridings doling out pork barrel dollars.

Just this week we’ve seen a flurry of announcements.

Peter MacKay handed out $617,000 for recreational structure upgrades in Pictou, N.S. Steven Blaney treated Quebec to $108,855 in snowmobiles. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz gave $1 million to a gluten-free Alberta bakery. So much for Alberta being the province of manly meat-eaters.

In total, pork in excess of $46 million was handed out in over 50 announcements across two days this week.

Then we have the news this week that the government announced $1.6 million for land restitution efforts in Colombia.

Foreign aid is an oldie but a goody. We doled out $5.7 billion of it in 2011. The UN Millennium Projects want that to increase to nearly $10 billion.

At a UN press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday, Jamaica was mentioned as a country that needs more funds from us, but their property tax compliance rate is only 50% and they haven’t reassessed the rates in a decade. In other words, pay for your own damn services.

While the foreign aid fans may find it scandalous that, a la Ron Paul, anyone would wager on a complete end to the practice, you’ve got to wonder where our priorities are.

Russia — with four times the billionaires Canada has — received $120 million in 2009-10. China, despite doing well enough to add a hefty premium to its Nexen bid, received $32 million. Kim Jong-Il, who apparently could control the weather and aimlessly sink hole-in-ones, was in need of $700,000 of our money.

Not only can we point out all the countries that don’t need the money or (like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe) are corrupt, there is mounting evidence that annual foreign aid only serves to entrench countries’ lack of self-reliance.

All this, combined with our own fiscal troubles and the fact we have our own Third World communities to grapple with (Attawapiskat, for example), makes it clear the racket must stop.

I’m aware of that old trope that, once in power, all parties govern from the centre.

But I don’t think it’s unfair to expect a Conservative government, elected with a majority over a year ago, should deliver on fiscal conservatism. (To their credit, they did cut $400 million this April, followed by the expected outrage.)

While recent polls suggest the Conservatives still lead due to a disjointed opposition, that’s no guarantee they’ll be back next term.

Certainly Flaherty & Co. wouldn’t like being beaten at the fiscal conservative game by former finance minister Paul Martin.

Angela Merkel’s proposed burka ban is huge news not so much because of what it is but because of who’s saying it. She’s one of the last politician in Europe you’d expect to float the idea. It means these sorts of policy ideas are well on their way to becoming acceptable fodder in mainstream, centrist politics.